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(Atrocity Stories} {Mongol Atrocities - The Sack of Baghdad}

The Destruction of Baghdad

In 1258, Genghis Khan's grandson, Hulegu Khan, turned his army of 300,000 southwards from Azerbaijan. The orders of the Great Khan were clear. All the land southwards was to be placed under Mongol rule. The first major city in his path was Baghdad, indisputably the greatest city in the Islamic world.

For several years the Abbasids, under the Caliph Mustansir had repulsed Mongols raids into Mesopotamia. But with Mustansir's death in 1242, the caliphate had passed to his son Mustasim. Frivolous and cowardly he was exploited by ruthless officials who had gotten used to running the city while Mustasim concentrated on spiritual affairs.

Mustasim's vizier, Ibn al-Alkami assured him that the oncoming Mongol threat was small and Baghdad's defenses more than adequate. Bolstered by this assessment Mustasim scoffed at the Hulegu's demand that the caliph do obeisance and dismantle Baghdad's walls, telling the khan's envoy "When you have pulled off the hoofs from your horse's feet, we will demolish our fortresses." But unknown to Mustasim, al-Alkami was sending secret messages to Hulegu, urging him to attack and describing the true and pitiful state of the city's defenses. Persian accounts of this treachery contend that the chief minister, a Shia Muslim, had been motivated by his resentment of the Caliph's persecution of his Shia brethren. In the meantime ambassadors rode back and forth, offering to pay tribute to Hulegu but refusing to surrender, while behind the city walls there was growing fear and confusion.

Hulegu finally grew impatient with Mustasim's temporizing and commenced military operations. Joining Hulegu were Christian Georgians who saw an opportunity for plunder and revenge -- and since Hulegu's wife Doquz-khatun, was a Christian, some of them believed the Mongols were really on a new Crusade to free the "holy land" of the infidel.

With the Mongols only a day away, Mustasim finally woke to the peril. Orders were given to repair the walls and a contingent of 20,000 troops was sent to confront the enemy. As they camped in the fields in sight of the city walls the Mongols surprised them by smashing the dams and dikes nearby and flooding the encampment. Those who did not drown were cut to pieces by the Mongol cavalry.

The Mongol forces next moved into the western suburbs. On the eastern side, Hulegu's engineers used immense gangs of prisoner-slaves to construct a ditch and a rampart that eventually surrounded the city "like a bracelet round the arm of a girl." On January 30th the bombardment of Baghdad began. Events had moved so swiftly that the carts bringing up ammunition, hewn from the Jebel Hamrin Mountains, were still three days away. So the artillery units improvised with stumps of palm trees and foundations from the occupied suburbs.

Mustasim sent a message to Hulegu accepting all the khan's terms, but was curtly told the time for negotiation was past. The heaviest bombardment was directed against the southeast corner of the walls and by February 1st, the third day of the bombardment, the Persian Tower was in ruins. On February 6th, the Mongols stormed and took the east wall. There they remained, as gradually the city surrendered.

Mustasim continued to send envoy after envoy to Hulegu to beg for terms, but they were refused an audience. Instead Hulegu demanded that the commander of the caliph's army and the deputy vizier order the withdrawal of the Muslim army from the city. The two leaders accomplished the task by telling the troops that they would be allowed to march away to Syria. As soon as the whole army was assembled on the plain outside the walls, the Mongols closed round them and killed them all, then the army commander and deputy vizier were also killed. Baghdad, without one soldier left to defend it, lay entirely at Hulegu's mercy.

On February 10th, Mustasim, his three sons and a retinue of about 3000 nobles went to Hulegu's camp. They were received courteously. Mustasim was commanded to order the inhabitant to evacuate the city. The caliph sent messengers to Baghdad proclaiming that all who wished to save their lives should come out of the city unarmed. Vast crowds of people herded out through the city gates. As soon as they were gathered together on open ground they were mercilessly butchered. The number killed varies according to the source Persian accounts claim between 800,000 and 2 million slaughtered, while Hulegu, in a letter to Louis IX of France, boasted of 200,000 slain. In a display of the discipline which explains much of their success, Mongol troops had stood on the walls of the helpless city awaiting orders. On the 13th the Mongols entered the city in several columns at different points and told to do as they wished. What they wished was destruction and mayhem. Magnificent mosques were toppled; palace after palace was looted in the orgy of destruction that was the sack of Baghdad.

Though the city had lost its commercial preeminence, it remained an important cultural, spiritual and intellectual center. The city held more than thirty colleges, among them the Mustansiriya, the best appointed university in the world. The cityscape was dotted with magnificent mosques, vast libraries of Persian and Arabian literature, plus numerous palaces belonging to the Caliph and his family and perhaps one of the greatest personal treasures to be found anywhere. It was the greatest city the Mongols conquered in the Middle East, and into this oasis of civilization they brought sword and torch. Books were dumped into the Tigris until it ran black from their ink.

Most of the surviving women and children were herded together and transported to Qaraqorum, as was the wealth of the Caliph's treasure house.

On the 15th, while the pillage was underway, Hulegu visited Mustasim's palace and forced the caliph to host a banquet for the Mongol leaders while the city burned and the cries from the street echoed into the night. Mustasim was forced to surrender all his treasures of gold, silver, and jewels. A Muslim Mongol had warned Hulegu against killing Mustasim, saying that if "a drop of the caliph's blood touched the earth it would mean eternal damnation." Hulegu heeded the warning. When dinner was over he had Mustasim and his sons sewn into Mongol carpets then trampled beneath the hooves of the Mongol cavalry. The caliph's blood did not touch the earth.

Baghdad's agony lasted for seven days. On February 20th Hulegu was forced to strike his tents and march his army away because of the stench of rotting corpses hanging over the smoking rubble that marked what was left of the once great city.

Whoa, now i knew the Mongols were savage, but i didnt know that they used these mercilles tricks on their enemies and completely butcher them. Ill post more of these as i browse through this amazing site :

Mongol rule, with its casual attitude toward farming and heavy taxation of peasants also discouraged repair. Iraq, which had enjoyed millennia of agriculture surplus as long ago as 3500 BCE drifted down to an agriculture that barely provided for subsistence. The evidence, suggests a catastrophic population drop which was every bit the equivalent of the worst disasters in history. Studies of the Iraqi province of Diyala, near Baghdad, indicate that this province, which probably had almost 900,000 inhabitants in the days of the Abbasids ca. 800, supported only around 60,000 persons ca. 1300 under Mongol rule. This 90% drop in population put the province back to the population levels of 1500 B.C. Apparently, less than half the land which had been cultivated in that province under the Abbasids could still be farmed in 1300. Nor was this province an isolated or extreme case. An Ottoman census of 1519 in what is modern Syria and Palestine shows fewer than 600,000 people living in an area that had a population of about 4 million in the days of the Arab Empire.

Population drop by 90 percent!!! Now thats ****ing genocide. I hear that these lands in mesapotamia used to be rich agriculture lands, but now are pure desert thanks to the Mongol Hordes..

Yea but the mamluks (also muslims) owned the mongols soon after that..

No, the mongols simply drifted away, scattered to the winds, and got integrated with the people they conquered. Like the Huns, and the Romans, they were never obliterated nor destroyed, they simply disintegrated under thier own empire's weight, and became part of the local cultures.

No, the mongols simply drifted away, scattered to the winds, and got integrated with the people they conquered. Like the Huns, and the Romans, they were never obliterated nor destroyed, they simply disintegrated under thier own empire's weight, and became part of the local cultures.

huh what? I was talking about the battle when the mamluks repelled the mongol invasion of Egypt, and took back a :wub: of muslim cities.

I'm talking about islam v.s mongols in general, as that is what the post you replied to was about.
The mamluks were just VERY good cavalrymen, plus they outnumbered the Mongols 4 to 1. That's not ownage, that's cheating.

Re: (Atrocity Stories} {Mongol Atrocities - The Sack of Baghdad}

Yeah, the sack of Baghdad was one of the worst atrocities in the Medieval Ages, I rue the loss of so much literature and knowledge that perished in the flames. There is still a book preserved from the sack that notes its rescue from the Tigris river.

However, not everyone got the worst of the Mongols in Baghdad. The Nestorians in Baghdad were notably spared because, as Remix posted, Hulegu's wife was a Christian (a Nestorian one too). They too joined in the frenzied destruction of Baghdad, delayed revenge (according to contemporary Nestorian sources) for the grievances they suffered under the Caliphs. That is, however, debatable, I'm only interpolating from the sources. Others may argue that the Abbasids were tolerant of Nestorians, but that is another matter...

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Re: (Atrocity Stories} {Mongol Atrocities - The Sack of Baghdad}

Originally Posted by Hapsburg

I'm talking about islam v.s mongols in general, as that is what the post you replied to was about.
The mamluks were just VERY good cavalrymen, plus they outnumbered the Mongols 4 to 1. That's not ownage, that's cheating.

Well, the mongol's had been known for taking superior numbers and whupping their tails. So if you want to look at it beyond numbers, 1 mongol should already have equaled more than a few opponents.

Re: (Atrocity Stories} {Mongol Atrocities - The Sack of Baghdad}

Originally Posted by {nF}remix

Yea but the mamluks (also muslims) owned the mongols soon after that..

I assume you mean Battle of Ain Jalut? To be fair, The mongol army was an occupation force when Hulagu took home most of the mongol army, including all of it's elite elements. Therefore, only about half of the mongol army were actually mongols(about 10,000). Also the Mameluk army that faced them were tailor made to fight mongol armies, most of the mameluk force were in fact steppe horsemen which came through Byzantium who knew all about mongol tactics.